I called up to the waiter,
Please bring me eau-de-vie
You said you've had that spirit here since
1963
–The Merlins, "Hotel Labyrinthos"
...indecision brings its own delays,
And days are lost lamenting over lost days.
—John Anster
#
Thanksgiving (I: Always Rushin')
{ What's going on in there? } said Harry Potter. { You haven't dragged me off course in the hallway between classes all day. }
I'm trying to work out the principles of wizard memory, Harry.
Pensieves obviously don't work on human memories – human memories are shoddy things, low resolution, nearly fictional, and scattered all over the brain.
What Dumbledore showed you how to pull out and stick in a pensieve is a well-defined unit.
And what you see in the pensieve* is nothing like a human memory – even it was as messy as the real thing I don't believe people have loads invisible floaty eyeballs they don't know about to show them the backs of your own heads.
{ Did you know you think with footnotes? }
Technically it's a forward reference, I tend to get ahead of myself. I never footle about, it upsets grandmothers needlessly.
What was it? Oh, right, not just pensieves, if you know *legilimency (oh, there's that forward reference) you get much the same immersive result by looking people in the eye, though the legilimens sees only one memory at a time and I suppose it's hard to keep focus when the other chap can look away.
So wizard memory has next to nothing to do with the human memory system. What could explain it?
Best guess at a paradigm is, it's actually a collection of symbolic links in the wizardy quantum brain that lead through the interconnectedness of all things to the actual original space-time events, to which you have read-only access.**
It seems to fit the data.
If you copy the link into the pensieve, a legilimens can still get at the original link by looking you in the eye. If you move it, he can't – and I wildly guess that the process of removing the link causes a psychological block on your biochemical memories, so you can't remember those, either.***
Oooooh, I want a pensieve! I need a pensieve!
{ But you don't remember anything! }
No, no, I just want one to muck about with. But they're so expensive! And I don't have time for layaway! That reminds me, next time you're in the dormitory, look through those transfiguration-practice boxes of bits and bobs from the lost-and-found, I think I saw some coins in there, probably muggle ones and foreign besides, but you never know.
–Wait! Hang about! I missed it! Harry, smack yourself in the forehead.
{ Nnnnope. }
Fine, be unhelpful.
{ What did you miss? }
When we were in the pensieve, that memory **wasn't actually read-only. We walked around. The floor was the actual floor, irregular boards and all. And gravity was gravity. That's interactivity! So it's not so much past reality on a read-only basis as a past reality that resists changes to the point that they don't persist after you leave! They'd never have invented the time-turner if they could change the past with pensieve technology.
{ Okay, and what about it? }
You used Professor Dumbledore's pensieve. You have a memory of the experience. Is it possible that you could use the memory pensieve as an actual pensieve?
{ That's...weird. }
And isn't weird wizard?
{ But even if you could use a memory-pensieve, you'd need a real pensieve to get at it, wouldn't you? }
Haha, no you wouldn't!
Because a *legilimens can review your memories on a one-off basis by looking you in the eye.
Which means if you have an appropriate mirror, possibly magical, you could use autolegilimency – self-legilimency, introspection, whatever – to visit anywhere you've ever been and make at least some use of it! Blimey, you could go to the library whenever you wanted. Is that why girls carry mirrors? no?
{ You're going to try to borrow Professor Dumbledore's pensieve without him even knowing, aren't you... }
It's a thought! He'd be right there in the room, that's the beauty of it! He can object if he likes.
What do we need to try it? A mirror and legilimency. Got a mirror, lots of lost compacts in the lost-and-found, didn't I have you make a copy of one? Yes? Good. Second, need you to learn legilimency, but we've got a library for that. And the books aren't even in the red-shelf section!
Ho, yes, it's worth a try! It beats my other two plans!
{ You had two other plans? }
Three, counting the one where I asked Myrtle whether her meal plan deposit from 1943 might have been in an interest-bearing account all this time.
(***)
Hmm...now what was that forward reference supposed to lead to? Oh, right! Yes! Removable memories! Those are interesting!
Wizards could remove every bit of their past that makes them unhappy and stick it all in a goldfish bowl and leave it on a shelf. I wonder why they don't? Other than it being a security risk. Or destroy them.
{ Just forget every unhappy thing forever? That seems like cheating. }
Well, if you want to play examined-life-not-worth-living advocate – unexamined, sorry – replace the goldfish bowl with a pensieve and review all your misery in the dispassion of the third person.
Amazing psychiatric tool, no wonder Mesmer gave up on his magical introspection experiments, pensieves are so much more space-efficient and portable, and you don't get fourteen years bad luck when you knock them over.
#
Dinnertime! and the grape juice flowed like wine.
The Ravenclaw table was too far away to hear normal conversations, but when exchange students from the New World get their dander up they tend to get all whiny and pierce the air with voices like a pierce-the-air thing, long, kind of pointy.
"...no history? What are you talking about, we've got history we don't even know what to do with..."
The Rupert would have paused over his moon-carrot tart, but it was Harry who was doing the eating and it was too much trouble to interrupt in order to interrupt, so to speak.
Hello, I forgot about him! Harry, step over to Ravenclaw when you're done, would you?
(*)
They passed by the Slytherin table on the way.
T. Beaconsfield was complaining bitterly (again) about the lack of a post-graduate program at Hogwarts.
"I don't want to go, Tim, I was just getting started on my reforms, I need more time. if I had it over again – and a more understanding set of parents – I'd deliberately fail a few courses and repeat a year."
Q.C. Flint sprayed a mouthful of tea into a copy of Quidditch Quarterly, apparently having read something surprising.
(*)
They entered Ravenclaw territory.
"...I mean, land-bridge notwithstanding, forget Columbus. And Leif Erikson, America was discovered 2200 years before Leif Erikson - it's all in Theopompatus - don't believe me, go ask Professor Binns about Merope the Amazon Queen...oh, hi there, you're Harry Potter, aren't you?"
"That's me!" said Harry Potter.
The Rupert said, "Pardon the intrusion, person from the land of iron and milk and brave and free, would you mind answering my questions three?"
"Ohhhkay..."
"First off, where exactly are you from? I keep hearing Vast Toffee, and that can't be right."
"In Minnesota? I'm from Vesta. Small town, Redwood County."
"Good, thank you. Just wanted to nail that down. I can stop wiggling my finger in my ear'ole now. Second question, bit late for Halloween but I'm still curious, you're American, you must know Ichabod Crane, how can the headless horseman see where he's going?"
"He has a horse."
"Oh. That would do it. Third question: is there any chance you can change this into real money for me? Found it in a dark corner somewhere, it looks American."
"Eleven cents? That won't get you much in wizarding money...um. Hmm."
"Um? I like um, it's nearly as good as Hmm. Taken together, peanut butter and chocolate."
"These are probably collectible. This is a 1926 dime and this penny is just weird. I don't even know what this is. I've got an uncle who collects coins, I could ask him, if you don't mind waiting."
"That," said the Rupert, "would be spiffing."
#
"How do you know he even noticed?" said the Rupert the next Friday afternoon at Hagrid's.
"How could he not?" said Ron. "I noticed, and he's in line for Seeker."
"Okay, yeah, reasonably sharp eye, DM has, but he was facing away from the fire and he didn't say anything."
"That just means he's plannin' future blackmail," said Ron darkly. "He'll pay a visit with a list of demands, like..."
"Sugar cookies?" said Neville, passing the plate.
"A Malfoy pass up a gettin' chance?" said Hagrid. He picked up a carbon-black sugar cookie and accidentally crushed it to diamond-y crystalline fragments. "Botherses," he added. "They're bad hats, all of 'em, they are."
"I'm hoping to talk him into a beanie," said the Rupert.
"I agree with Harry," said Hermione. "Not about the beanie, beanies are ridiculous."
"No they're not, they're ludicrous, noteworthy difference."
"Anyway," continued Hermione, "why not just get rid of the egg? Put in in a box and owl it to Ron's brother Charlie."
"Eh?" said Hagrid. "It's already cookin', Hermione. I can't take it off the merry hob, it'd die."
"How can you be sentimental over something that's going to treat your fingers like ladyfingers?" said Ron. Neville looked like he was going to move his seat further from the fire but didn't.
"Dangerous things need more love," said the gamekeeper firmly. "An' there's one thing on my side, it may not be an illegal dragon.
"I looked through all the dragon books in the library, see, an' a few more besides, an' that egg don't quite match up any of 'em. It started off lookin' sorta Norwegian Ridgeback, but that cooked off and now it's different. It's the shape of a Common Welsh Green, the size of the Golden Madagascar an' the texture of an Alizarin Crimson. If it ain't on the prohibited list, it ain't forbidden, I says."
"Where do you get potentially illegal dragon eggs, anyway?" asked the Rupert. "Or should I just ask Fred and George?"
"Oh, they ain't all that hard teh find. I shot craps for this 'un, in a bar in London when I went up with Jim there. I won seven-come-eleven," he added.
"Shot craps with whom?" said the Rupert.
"Oh, just some wizard who was passin' through. Big kinda fat fella, had a robe on looked like a 'splosion in a rainbow factory."
"You weren't drinking in Knockturn Alley, were you?" asked Ron.
"No!" It should have been hard to tell when Hagrid blushed, but it wasn't. "Not then, no," he admitted. "Though I did stop in for a quick'un later at Tull Bend, saloon there gets in Roman Ale...fella in there had a dragon egg, too, I was tempted but the fireplace ain't big enough..."
#
Hogwarts had lots of mice. Between Mrs Norris and the twenty-odd student cats she ruled with a velvet-toed iron paw you'd think wouldn't stand a chance, but they'd mastered invisibility centuries ago.
When Mrs Norris's kittens were old enough to enter the hallways they were therefore obliged to chase students instead.
{ Why does your mental library have Dickens filed under Popular Fiction? } asked Harry as they passed a Ravenclaw backed into a corner by a tiny black ball of fuzz.
What do you mean?
{ He's boring! }
No he's not!
"Um, help?"
It's just a question of style. People used to queue up on docks to find out what happened next, with Dickens, in the days of serialisation.
{ You've got to be kidding. }
"Somebody? Please?"
Nope, nope, drew effective characters, Dickens. The Donald Knuth of mental paraprogramming.
{ The who of what? }
Mental paraprogramming, said the Rupert, taking control of the legs and shifting into reverse. Human brains model other humans all the time, he said, backing down the hallway. It's how you anticipate what the other chap's going to say and do. He reached into his pockets and rummaged around. Fictional people, same principle, but you need to do it properly. He pulled out a marshmallow flutterpie and tossed it at the kitten, which chased it down the hall and around the corner. You can draw a character that everyone understands with three carefully selected data points if you're good, it's like those spliney-winey-curve things, all the missing data just falls into place, the brain says oh, I know you!
If you're not good, all the details you can pile on won't get you a working character model.
{ And Donald Knuth? }
Who? Oh, Donald Knuth! He's the Dickens of computer programming.
"Thank you!" said the Ravenclaw.
"No worries," said the Rupert.
#
Monday, the 18th of November, a lunch-time note arrived from Hagrid by way of a green woodpecker. Come And See, it said, and so that afternoon they did, arriving to find a brand new dragon – small and purple with emerald slit-pupilled eyes and green spiky ridges – sitting on Hagrid's table, eating its own shell.
"Don't know what she is, but she's nice, though, ain't she?" said Hagrid proudly.
"How do you know she's not he?" said Hermione, watching it in fascination.
"All dragons'r female," said Hagrid, distracting the dragon with one hand, collecting a small shell fragment with the other. "Even when they ain't. They're like ships, hey? Or like all cats are girls and all dogs are boys." He tucked the bit of shell in one of the pockets on his upper slopes. He twirling the dragon's tail around his pinkie. "Ain't she somethin'?
"Think I'll call her Barb. Where'd I put them bandages...?"
"What happened to Mordecai?" asked Neville.
"Mordecai - them kittens, tha's what," said Hagrid darkly. "They're out of the castle now an' took special interest in 'im. Kept goin' up trees after him, so he just up an' left. Took off t' the west an' kept goin', poor thing. Harried him white-feathered, they did."
"Why a woodpecker?" asked the Rupert. "Why not an owl?"
Hagrid shrugged mountainously. "Allus seemed weird t'me, usin' night birds by broad daylight." He turned his attention to the woodpecker, perched on a peg by the open window. "An' he's is smart enough, isn' he? What time is it, eh?"
The bird blinked and pecked the window frame eight times.
They looked at the cuckoo clock, which read 3:42.
"'course, yeh gotta be careful when yeh ask," admitted Hagrid.
#
Hermione was Library Girl. Heaven only knew who Library Boy was, because it certainly wasn't the Rupert. Every time he went in to locate the proper instruction books he ended up leaving with something else.
At the moment he was being distracted by The Diary of Iain Adams – which contained as an appendix a list of all the books he'd never returned to Hogwarts, and which indeed had become the original library of the American Wizengamot – and reading it slowly while listening with one ear to what was going on behind nearly closed doors.
It was a great Loss to Wizardry that Mr Franklin was born a Muggle. I feel certain that his magnificent Brain could yet dissolve the mystery of ecstatic Electricity in an instant, yet I am forbade even to mention it to him.
"And we went to see the Apocalypse," said Filch to Madam Pince, from behind the door. "It was a bit rubbish, everything falling apart."
"Don't you mean the Acropolis, Argus?" said Madam Pince.
"Maybe I shouln'a gone at night," said Filch. "But where we went next, that was pretty good."
#
After Astronomy class on the 20th, sleep did not want to come.
{ I want, } said Harry, { a bacon sandwich. }
I'm a vegetarian, said the Rupert, get your own. What are you doing?
{ Watch and learn, } said Harry. He put on the all-grey robes that still hadn't been color-corrected and slipped silently down the stairs and out the common room door.
You're going to get detention, said the Rupert.
"Mrrrgpm," commented Mme. Du Mont.
{ No I won't, } said Harry, and shimmed the portrait with a still-unpaired mitten to stop it locking again. { Mr Filch won't be on this floor until five, and Mrs Norris and her kittens are all basketed. } And he padded down the hall in his socks to the secret passage to the kitchens.
And how are you going to get back through the closed secret door, miladdo?
{ It pushes open from the other side, } said Harry. { I asked Fred that a week ago, weren't you paying attention? I know you were there, you were nattering to yourself about memetic emboitment, whatever that is. }
Hum, said the Rupert. Things happening without me noticing, good or bad? Probably good.
They emerged into a closet full of books.
Cookbooks! said the Rupert. A complete set of Beeton's Household Management! I like this kitchen. Mmmm, garlic. And leeks. Love a leek.
Harry pushed open the door and emerged into the kitchens...
...and there at a blocky wooden table were Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle, with a layout of bread, cheese, and –
"Is that wine?" said the Rupert.
"I'm allowed wine," said Malfoy. A thimbleful, maybe, thought th Rupert.. "And what are you doing here, Potter? Come to rat us out?"
"Well I'm here too, you know."
"Where's that butter, you?" said Malfoy to the nearest Kitchen Elf, a crumpled-up sad thing. It looked up at him with electric blue eyes and continued working with a glass mortar and a stone pestle in the form of a rhino's horn. "It is coming, Draco Malfoy, it will be here soon."
"Well tell them to churn faster, or whatever it is they do!"
"Davvy obeys, Draco Malfoy," said the elf. It looked to the Rupert, and said "Can Davvy help Harry Potter?"
"In a bit," said the Rupert. "Carry on, don't mind me. What are you doing, by the way?" he asked, following it down a short hallway to the cold room where butter was presumably being made.
"Davvy is grinding pearls, Harry Potter. Razzy has a cold. Davvy is grinding pearls for the cure for Razzy."
Harry and the Rupert watched another elf pouring a sack of greyish fluff into a butter mold.
"And what is that?" he asked.
"A firkin of dust, a firkin of butter, Harry Potter," said Davvy.
"Blimey, is that how it works?" said the Rupert. "House elves scurrying around cleaning all the time and what you collect you transfigure into food?"
{ Ew, } said Harry.
"Id ith not quite that, Harry Potter," sniffled Razzy the elf, shuffling into the kitchen. "To nothing we offer, from nothing we ask, and it is given freely. Razzy thanks Davvy."
"Razzy is welcome!" said Davvy happily, and turned his attention to moving boxes of Angelus™ Macaroni from crate to shelves. Muggle food, protected.
"So it doesn't have to balance?"
"It does not," said Razzy, finishing his crushed pearls, and Vanishing the pestle. "But it is right." He turned to the butter mold and helped pull out a large block, which was placed in paper for making into sticks.
One of these he took back to Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle.
"About time," said Goyle, and bounced a hot cross bun off Razzy's head. The Rupert caught it in midair and set it back on the table.
"Amazing," he said to the elf. "These kitchens pump out three wildly varied meals a day every day for about 400 people, some of whom eat like Billy Bunter. I wondered how you did it in the absence of deliveries, but hang about, what to you use for the original?"
"It is the idea," said Razzy.
"Trying to get sorted into House Elf, Potter?" said Crabbe.
"Con-sorting with the help," mumbled Draco Malfoy.
"Hanging with losers," said Goyle.
"Why," said the Rupert, cramming "do you put up with this" into the intonation.
Razzy shuffled away unfazed. "Razzy must work, Harry Potter. If losing gives Razzy work, Razzy is happy to lose..."
#
"When are you going to get that robe of yours taken care of?" said Hermione at breakfast..
"What's wrong with it? It's great for sneaking about in the hallways at night. Professor Snape should get one, he'd be much harder to see. Could do some proper lurking in a robe like this."
#
Harry went to evening quidditch practices nearly on his own.
{ Are you going to pay attention to the first match? } he said.
If you want me to, said the Rupert. I still haven't quite internalised quidditch. It still strikes me as a duel. I don't care for duels.
But...maybe I just need to see the game from the right point of view.
#
"You want what?" said Q.C. Flint, one morning.
"I beg your pardon?" said Q.C. Wood, one evening.
"A memory," said the Rupert. "A quidditch memory, of a game. Not an important match, just a little one. Something you won't need back right away. Just some random match your dad took you to when you were little."
"What, you have a pensieve?" said Q.C. Flint (morning).
"Where'd you get a pensieve?" said Q.C. Wood (evening).
"I don't have a pensieve, but I think I can find one to use before the first game, and I'd like to see a game before I might have to play one – you know I've never seen one, don't you?"
"Never been to a match?" said each Q.C. "I see."
"Stellar!" said the Rupert. "I just happen to have this envelope suitable to the purpose of holding it."
But he didn't need to teach Harry legilimency, not that day, because Flint and Wood went to their respective heads and in short order he found himself being set in front of the Headmaster's pensieve again, if not with free rein.
#
I get it now. It's not a duel, it's a duet.
The purpose of the seekers isn't to catch the snitch and win the game, it's to avoid the snitch and keep the game going so long as it's fun...
{ So you think you'll watch the game on the day? Not that I'll get to play. }
Yeah, probably, said the Rupert. Now to return these memories to their proper owners.
#
Game day arrived clear and bright.
The stands were full. Even the teachers had turned out, although Professor Quirrell looked like the only reason he was on his chair was because he had been nailed there. (His most recent exam had included questions on nookfesters, murkwraps, spindleturners and darkshapes, even though none of them had been covered in class.)
The Rupert looked into a sky so blue it inspired daydreams, and wondered if he actually would be able to pay attention, confined to the sidelines on an idling Cleansweep 7.
(...)
Hanging by his fingertips from an out-of-control Cleansweep 7 that was plunging straight toward the extremely pointy lightning rod mounted atop the Clock Tower, the Rupert yelled around the holly wand clenched between his teeth:
"How can I possibly be having deja vu?"
#
"You're going to get another new broom," said Wood. "Filch managed to get it out from between the gears – turns out it wasn't a Cleansweep 7 at all."
"It was an overcharmed Cleansweep 6 transfigured to look like a 7," said Flint. "Good work with those cushioning charms on your way to the ground, by the way."
"Showed real presence of mind," said Wood. "You've got to watch out for this grey-market owl-post stuff."
"You think you're getting a deal but it's some clot with a Diagon Alley mailing address," said Flint. "Really around the corner."
"Or in Tull Bend. Although the original 6 was flaky to begin with."
"Though a lot of people swear by them," said Wood. "Amazing acceleration."
"Plus an even more amazing tendency to stall. They called it the Hex for a reason."
"Ahh-you just have to know how to juice them. Now the Cleansweep 4, that was a dangerous one."
"Oh, I had one! runs really sweet for eighty minutes and then bites you for no apparent reason."
"Why they left one in the firstie training set I'll never know...my dad had an original model 1, you know. Smash your head in, that one."
"Get away?"
My work here is done, thought the Rupert.
{ Are you sure you returned those memories to their proper owners? }
Define proper, Harry Potter.
#
And a while later...
#
{ What's going on in there? } said Harry Potter. { You haven't dragged me off course in the hallway between classes all day. }
Oh, I've been planning an itinerary.
{ What, are we going somewhere? }
Lots of places! Really only one. Complicated. Grand adventure.
Incidentally, Harry, can you think of a synonym for sieve?
{ Um...cheesegrater? }
Cheesegrater?!
{ Aunt Petunia stopped asking Dudley to help in the kitchen for more than one reason. }
Okaaaay. Here's another one, a real one, an old one:
Riddle.
